Evil tinkering, my bad.
So we got a new HP printer, with a scanner. Wished to use the scanner using simple-scan, no luck. Installed xsane, nope. Tried to reinstall hplip, the thing got removed but not reinstalled. Things got worse. In despair, went down the evil way of try-and-remove-this-and-that. Should have known better.

Now I removed cups and of course I can't even print- Not only that, but it can't be reinstalled: